The City & The City

By: China Mieville

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-selling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other, real or imagined.

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel's equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma.

With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman's secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 2010

©2009 China Mieville (P)2009 Random House

Critic reviews

"Daring and disturbing...Miéville illuminates fundamental and unsettling questions about culture, governance and the shadowy differences that keep us apart." (Walter Mosley, author of Devil in a Blue Dress)

"Lots of books dabble in several genres but few manage to weld them together as seamlessly and as originally as The City and The City. In a tale set in a series of cities vertiginously layered in the same space, Miéville offers the detective novel re-envisioned through the prism of the fantastic. The result is a stunning piece of artistry that has both all the satisfactions of a good mystery and all the delight and wonder of the best fantasy.” (Brian Evenson, author of Last Days)

"Mr. Miéville's novels - seven so far - have been showered with prizes; three have won the Arthur C. Clarke award, given annually to the best science fiction novel published in Britain…. [H]e stands out from the crowd for the quality, mischievousness and erudition of his writing…. Among the many topics that bubble beneath the wild imagination at play are millennial anxiety, religious cults, the relationship between the citizen and the state and the role of fate and free will." (The New York Times)

Ingenius ajnd complex

A fictional Balkland setting that stretches the reality there (and here) to where you see the absurdities of the frontier lines betweeen countries.

Great writing is hard to dismiss.

Excellent job from John Lee as always.
Keep writing whatever you want China Mieville. Enjoy the fruits of your imagination. Be happy happy man.

didn't love the narrator

it was an interesting modern fantasy story with a lot of unique elements, but the narrator made it hard to stay focused and interested for me.

Not Mieville's best - but still good

What does John Lee bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

John Lee is an AMAZING narrator. He could read the phone book and I would listen.

Any additional comments?

The story is fascinating. Not least because at no time throughout the story do you ever REALLY know whether the situation of the City and the City is somehow supernatural or merely an extreme example of how crazy human society and politics can be.

Therein lie the few faults unfortunately. Towards the end there are a few inconsistencies and the writing seems a little rushed. It's still one of the more interesting stories I've read lately, both the plot itself and the metaphysical exploration.

Masterful Detective/Speculative

Wonderful genre-bender. Great detective story. Great political parable of a world almost like ours. And I’d listen to John Lee read the phone book. His smooth rendition is compulsively listenable.

Another fantastic book from a wonderful author and a great narrator

John Lee does a brilliant job of bringing this mindbending but believable story to life. China Mieville consistently delivers intriguing concepts with heartily enjoyable stories to illustrate them, and this is no different. You won’t regret listening!

brilliance

im still not sure whether the cities are physically separate. brilliant writing. absolutely would suggest

Interesting Premise

This is a very creative book. It doesn't really fit into any genre easily. It is a detective story, it is a political thriller, it is a bit of science fiction. It is actually none of those things and all of them at the same time. Imagine two peoples sharing the same physical space (a former eastern bloc city) yet living entirely apart - ignoring each other, pretending that the other does not exist. Then imagine a murder that seems to cross these carefully defended boundaries. That is the premise of The City & The City and it is extremely well-executed.

not for the casual listener

I'm sure this is a great book, as the reviews suggest, but I tend to listen to audiobooks while doing other things and I found that it was very easy to miss things in this recording. It seems like a dense 'read' that you need to pay attention to in order to appreciate. I usually like urban fantasy and mysteries (I love the Dresden files, for example) but I just couldn't get into this.

Really good New Weird.

Really good new weird. Reminds me of Sherlock Holmes meets a Balkan le Carré or Greene meets Philip K. Dick. I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been written. Good stuff, the narrative moves and the details are exceptional.